If you have naturally dark eyes and have decided to take a giant step in eye fashion, you need to know how to choose the right colored contacts for dark eyes. Before you do that, however, it helps to know some basic facts about eye color and contact lenses in general.

It is color pigments in the eye’s iris that determine the color of your eyes. There are many variations of eye color, known as phenotypic traits, such as blue, brown, gray, green and more. The color of the eyes is determined by multiple genes and any number of genetic combinations can occur to produce a person’s eye color. In all eye colors, however, the black pigment is always present. Brown is the most common eye color and green the rarest.

There are three color pigments, depending upon their proportion, that dictate what color the eyes will have: brown, yellow and blue. Thus, brown eyes have a high ratio of the brown pigment while green eyes have mostly a mixture of the yellow and blue pigments. When choosing colored contact lenses, it is important to consider the natural color of the eyes.

Contact lenses are lenses made of silicone hydrogels placed on the eyes’ cornea to correct vision deficiencies. However, contact lenses have become increasingly popular as fashion aids to change the appearance of the eyes. The US Food and Drug Administration refers to these as “decorative contact lenses”. A common use of colored contact lenses is in the entertainment industry. Stage and screen make use of these lenses especially in horror or zombie productions, or to give the performer the look of someone under the influence of drugs.

For fashion purposes, however, people make use of decorative contact lenses in the same way that they use lipstick, nail polish and hair color to alter their appearance and make them look more attractive. As is the case with other fashion aids, knowing how to choose the right colored contacts is important.

Persons with naturally light eye colors have a wider option when it comes to changing the color of their eyes. They may choose between “enhancement tints” or “opaque tints”. Enhancement tints are more translucent and can give the eyes a color change with more subtlety and variation.

When a person has naturally dark colored eyes and wants to change to a totally different color, contact lenses with an opaque tint are necessary to achieve the desired effect. Aside from the natural color of the eyes, other factors that need to be considered at the natural skin tone and the suitability of the contact lens color with the person’s overall personality. Fashion sense, finally, will prevail in choosing colored contacts for dark eyes.